


FFVII Drabble Dump

by ninemelodies



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 10:13:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3245813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemelodies/pseuds/ninemelodies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Collection of drabbles consisting of mostly Reno. Stories may vary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Home

**Author's Note:**

> All chapters are different times, some stories may be connected if you wish to view them that way.

Home was a weird concept to Reno. He never felt at home in a soft bed with an air conditioner humming in the background. Home was supposed to be where the heart belonged, so why did Reno feel like his heart belonged to the streets he grew up on? Where each and everyday was fight to survive, to just make it one more minute without being noticed by someone stronger. He misses the noise and stench that used to be normal to him.

This soft bed wasn’t right, but the hard, cold ground of an alleyway was. On missions, Reno was the one most likely to give up a bed to sleep on the floor. He was the one most likely to charge into a crowded market place and find the target in a matter of seconds. He had never lost a bar fight or hand-to-hand brawl. All because of what he’d learned on the streets.

Maybe that was why a bed felt wrong. What he’d learned on the streets was so integrated into his system that even 10 years later, he couldn’t shake it. The streets would forever be his home.


	2. Addiction

Reno had struggled with addiction all his life. From his time on the streets he learned that drugs and alcohol were a crutch. Something to make the shitty world seem just a little less shitty. In reality, it made it worse.  
His addiction had started with a cigarette. One simple cancer stick had caused his life to begin rolling down into the flames. He was 15 at the time, too young to buy cigarettes without attracting legal attention, so he had a dealer. This person would go into stores and buy them and then sell them to Reno.

This person was the same one that introduced him to the harder stuff. The more deadly stuff that left people in the alleys, dead and mugged. A street drug called ‘Lifestream,’ the most deadly drug on the market and 16 year old Reno was doing hits of it once a day, eventually more as the need for it grew. In between his 16th and 17th birthday, he turned into something close to a monster. He gave up everything just to get his next hit, including forgoing food for weeks on end. Reno quickly turned into a walking skeleton, dead to the work except when he knew he was going to get his next fix. Only then would his eyes brighten a slightest bit. 

Eventually he turned to stealing to get what he needed. By the time he sank that low, he was 17. That was the last year he spent on the streets. A Turk caught him stealing right before he turned 18, and upon realizing that he was alive and functioning in that hellhole without turning to prostitution, decided that Reno was the perfect candidate for the Turks. So he was taken off the streets and to a rehab center. It took him until he was 21 to get over his addiction. 

Even now, at 23, two years out and in the best health he’s been in since he was 15, he finds himself craving another hit. Just one more, one side of him says, even while the other side is fighting and clawing to send that tendril of addiction that is left to the shadows. He will never be over his time on the streets and the drugs he found there, but now he’s strong enough to fight it. His demons will never bring him back to that level of hell again.


	3. Love

Love was such a stupid complex thing. Many times had Reno seen people sacrifice everything in the name of love. Personally, he never understood it. To him, love was loyalty. The ability to say, “I’ve got your back,” and really mean it, no strings attached. It was the kind of loyalty that could only be achieved after years of working with someone. After thousands of close calls, and hundreds of near deaths.

It was that same kind of ‘love’ he had for his chopper. The same one that had been crashed, burnt, and bent to all hell. He’d spend weeks after each mission fixing it and making sure it ran just as smoothly as the day he first got it. Of course he knew that eventually one crash would be too violently, would shatter it into pieces and he’d never see it again, but that was okay.

To Reno, love wasn’t just some hormone based bullshit. It was trust and loyalty, and it would stay in his mind that way forever.


	4. Bar Owner

Reno’s bar was his pride and joy. He’d started it from almost nothing ten years ago. A small place that only served beer and occasionally the soda fountain worked, but very rarely. Eventually it became known as the hangout for bikers and their friends. It wasn’t really how he meant it to work out, but that was okay.

Now it was a fully functional bar with an extra room in the back for bands to play live. He and his other bartenders served at least 200 people a night. Many competitors had come and gone, but Reno’s bar was still standing strong. He had no intention of letting it fall now that he’d invested so much time in it. For as long as he could, he was going to make sure he was out on the floor every night.

More often than not it was a good thing he was. He could personally kick out guys being asses to his bartenders, and he could make sure all his customers were safe. The first, and last, time a guy picked a fight with Reno, Reno had ended up dragging the guy out by the collar with blood on his fists and on his bar’s floor.

Yes, his bar was doing well and going strong, but if he looked out the window, he could see a new bar across the street, and the manager was a little too blond and headstrong for his tastes. This was going to be a tough fight.


	5. Save

Reno was drunk. Not the cute, seductive kind of drunk that resulted in one night stands, no, this was something worse. This kind of drunk was the ugly kind. The kind reserved only for those people who wanted to forget everything for a couple hours. It was the kind of drunk achieved by shot after shot of the hard stuff. Whiskey, tequila, anything that would get him black out drunk as fast as humanly possible.

It didn’t go unnoticed by the bartender either. The bartender was an older man, wise and observant, fit more to be a teacher than a server of adult drinks in a sleazy downtown bar, and he knew Reno by voice alone. Given that, he knew something was wrong with his favorite redheaded regular. For a while, he didn’t ask what had happened, but soon, he didn’t have to. Reno got drunk enough for the sorrow locking his tongue to spill free.

Hands tangled in unruly red locks as his head bowed. Tears splashed on the counter top, leaving small puddles as the only proof they were there in the first place. Reno began to mutter to himself, eventually getting loud enough for the bartender to make out what he was saying.

"I failed him. I couldn’t save him in time. I was the one piloting that chopper, goddammit!” He slammed his fist on the bar, startling several customers in the process. Pinning the bartender with a surprisingly sober stare, Reno asked one more question. “Why couldn’t I save him?” After that final question, his eyes glazed back over, and he resumed his mutterings and staring at the countertop. Except now the bartender could hear him repeat the same question over and over.

"Why couldn’t I save him?"


End file.
